It is often desirable to administer two or more different liquid foods or solutions to infants in sequential order. For example, liquid medicine followed by milk, water, or fruit juice; or to provide an infant with milk and juice at mealtime. Nursing bottles are commonly used to feed babies with water, milk, juice, medicine, or any of a variety of edible nutritive fluids. A normal nursing bottle generally comprises a bottle, a nipple, and a cap fastened to the mouth of the bottle to hold the nipple in place. This structure of nursing bottle can only be used for feeding one fluid, or a mixture of fluids. Therefore, a parent or nursery may have to prepare several nursing bottles for feeding an infant with different fluids.
When attempting to administer medicine to an infant, the infant may refuse to take the medicine because of its strange or offensive taste. In order to coax an infant to take the medicine, the parent or nursery may alternatively feed the infant with milk, juice, or a sweet fluid during intervals of administration of medicine. However, it is not convenient to administer a number of different fluids to the infant in this manner. While switching from one bottle to another during the action of feeding, the infant may become frustrated and refuse to take any bottle, or the bottles may be accidentally dropped and thereby contaminated.
In an attempt to overcome some of these problems, the use of liquid containers or dispensers having more than one chamber has been attempted. Examples of multiple chambered baby bottles are illustrated in Liu et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,964; Lake, U.S. Pat. No. 4,971,211; and Fox, U.S. Pat. No. 5,060,811. However, each of these discloses a bottle in which manual switching from one compartment to another is required to accomplish the sequential administration of different fluids. Thus, to effectively administer fluids by way of these bottles, the parent or nursery must constantly monitor the progress of fluid imbibing by the infant, which can be inconvenient or impractical. Another form of dual chambered bottle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,425, issued to Gomez-Acevedo, wherein a plug separates different compositions contained in the separate compartments until force is applied to displace the plug. This bottle is designed for keeping substances separate until just prior to their administration to an infant, at which point the plug is removed and the substances contained in the separate compartments are mixed. Displacement by the plug is accomplished by shaking the bottle or squeezing the bottle with sufficient force to displace the plug. Although the '425 patent asserts that this bottle may be used to contain different substances which can be consumed in a separate manner without the necessity of mixing them, this bottle suffers from the same deficiencies as the others described above in that adult manual intervention is required to access the fluid in the second compartment. It is an object of the subject invention to permit the sequential administration of different fluids to an infant without such adult intervention as manually switching from one compartment to another. Access to the different compartments of the subject invention is accomplished merely by sucking action of the infant.
Doctors have long recommended against putting an infant to sleep with a bottle of milk because of the accelerated rotting of the teeth that can be encouraged by milk residue remaining in the infant's mouth once it falls asleep. The bottle of the subject invention overcomes this problem as well. Milk can be provided in the first chamber and water in a second chamber such that as an infant sucks and finishes off all milk in the first compartment, the baby will continue sucking and thereby gain access to a second compartment filled with water which then serves to rinse the milk residue from the baby's mouth. In this manner, the infant can be put to bed with a bottle according to the subject invention without fear of accelerating dental decay.
With the above and other objects in view, the present invention consists of the combination and arrangement of parts hereinafter more fully described. Illustrated in the accompanying drawings, and more particularly pointed out in the appended claims, it being understood that changes may be made in the form, size, proportions, and minor details of construction without departing from the spirit or sacrificing any of the advantages of the invention.